At the turn of the century Martin Buber arrived on the philosophic scene... The path to his maturity was one long struggle with the problem of unity- in particular with the problem of the unity of spirit and life; and he saw the problem itself to be rooted in the supposition of the primacy of the subject-object relation, with subjects "over here," objects "over there," and their relation a matter of subjects "taking in" objects or, alternatively, constituting them. But Buber (...) moved into a position which undercuts the subject-object dichotomy and initiates a second "Copernican revolution" in philosophical thought. (shrink)

Misunderstandings of Hegel have several roots: one is the intrinsic difficulty of his highly technical and interrelated conceptual sets, another is ideological opponents who consequently take statements out of context, and a third is following those of high stature who pass on the misunderstandings. Typical misunderstandings concern freedom and necessity, slavery, that status of the individual, God and the State, facts measuring up to concepts, the relation of rationality and actuality, the status of passion, and, above all, the nature of (...) absolute knowing. Resituating these notions within the whole of the System shows the one-sidedness of typical misunderstandings and opens the way toward appropriation. (shrink)

The notion of the heart is one of the most basic notions in ordinary language. It is central to Heidegger’s notion of thought that he relates to the primordial word Gedanc as underlying attunement that issues forth in emotional phenomena. He plays with all the etymological cognates of that word to zero in on the phenomena involved. The key experience of Erstaunen that grounds the first beginning of philosophy is paralleled by Erschrecken that grounds Heidegger’s “second beginning” and plays counterpoint (...) with the first. Along with Befindlichkeit as one’s basic attunement, these are key phenomena that belong to the heart, not to ‘intellect’ or ‘will.’ Thinking in terms of the intellect is das rechnende Denken¸ thinking in terms of the heart, besinnliche Nachdenken. It is the latter that provides the “poetic-intellectual” experience for both the arts and philosophy in which such “world space” is created that even the ordinary appears extraordinary. (shrink)

Examining select high points in the speculative tradition from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages and German tradition to Dewey and Heidegger, _Placing Aesthetics_ seeks to locate the aesthetic concern within the larger framework of each thinker's philosophy. In Professor Robert Wood's study, aesthetics is not peripheral but rather central to the speculative tradition and to human existence as such. In Dewey's terms, aesthetics is “experience in its integrity.” Its personal ground is in “the heart,” which is the dispositional (...) ground formed by genetic, cultural, and personal historical factors by which we are spontaneously moved and, in turn, are inclined to move, both practically and theoretically, in certain directions. Prepared for use by the student as well as the philosopher, _Placing Aesthetics_ aims to recover the fullness of humanness within a sense of the fullness of encompassing Being. It attempts to overcome the splitting of thought, even in philosophy, into exclusive specializations and the fracturing of life itself into theoretical, practical, and emotive dimensions. (shrink)

In aesthetics and in philosophy generally, Dewey and Heidegger have many surprising convergences. Both find the contemporary world unsuitable for full human flourishing: Dewey because of the separation of art and religion from everyday life; Heidegger because of the disappearance of the sense of Mystery. Both go back to a time before the problems emerged. Both hold for the intentionality of consciousness, the bodily inhabitance of a common world having priority over a sovereign consciousness, the founding role of language in (...) the life-world, the distinction between the art-product and the working of art upon its audience, the founding role of poetry, and the way a sense of the Whole can open up in the working of art. But Dewey, centering upon the aesthetic as integral experience, underscored its linkage with the rhythmic character of the body interacting with the environment, while Heidegger focused upon the sense of the surrounding Mystery. (shrink)

A rigorous but always readable, pointed but not coercive introduction to metaphysics, beginning with the creation and explication of a metaphysical system and then defending it through a reading of the Western tradition from Parmenides to ...

What is seeing? A phenomenological approach to neuropsychology -- First things first: on the priority of the notion of being -- The undeconstructible foundations of human existence: on the magnetic bipolarity of human awareness -- The cosmos has an inside: on the cosmomorphic character of Anthropos.

Being Human is the fruit of many years teaching Philosophical Anthropology, conducting Phenomenological Workshops, and reading classic texts in the light of a reflective awareness of the field of experience. Being Human is intended to look to what is typically assumed but not examined in much of current philosophical literature.

What one takes to be a body is identified initially as what is available to sensing. Sensing and reflecting are not so available. How one conceives of theirrelation admits of at least six possibilities exhibited in the history of philosophy: Hobbesian materialism, Berkleyan idealism, Platonic dualism of soul and body,Aristotelian hylomorphism, Cartesian dualism of thought and extension, and a Leibnizian-Whiteheadian view of psycho-physical co-implication. The latter viewredraws the conceptual map in a way most in keeping with experience as a whole (...) and with neural physiology in particular. (shrink)

Contrary to wide-spread caricatures of Nietzsche, he has definite standards of value that are largely defensible, though on another basis than he provides. Thenadir is the Last Man; the zenith is the Overman. Contrary to the otherworldliness of Plato and the Christian tradition, Nietzsche demands fidelity to the earth anda love of the body. The modern virtue of truthfulness dissolved the tradition, but eventuated in the Last Man who lives in “wretched contentment.” The Overmanrequires organizing the chaos of one’s life (...) and submission to centuries-long practices without contempt for the earth. He demands the unity of conscious and unconscious, sensitivity to beauty, love of each individual thing and the love of eternity. He seeks broad vision grounding the unity of humankind in which each individual can find his or her highest potential. All these are eminently defensible values. (shrink)

PLATO'S WAS a peculiar genius unmatched by any in the entire history of Western thought. He understood well the central play in human experience between appearance, which, ambiguously poised, is a vehicle of both revelation and concealment, and the reality which appearance both conceals and reveals--or better, which appearance conceals as it reveals. The grounds of this play lie both in the character of human structure and in the character of the whole within which that structure functions. Grounded in the (...) unconscious of physiology, the field of human awareness rises by stages from an immediately given, biologically-based circle of sensory awareness, through a culturally mediated sphere of different modes of situating the sensory surface within the greater whole, to a basic orientation toward that all-encompassing whole, which affords us the distance needed to grasp both the orientation itself as orientation and the stages preceding it. Ordinary life is locked into a struggle between the biologically grounded desires and the peculiarities of cultural mediation that seek to channel those desires. Ordinary life exists in relation to a kind of functional surface of things which it co-constitutes with those things in a sort of "dashboard knowledge," knowing what to push and pull and turn to get the desired responses. Sophists continually arise as masters of appearance, often taking themselves, especially if they think they have the sanction of the gods, as genuine lovers of wisdom. (shrink)

SENSING PRESENTS TO US INDIVIDUALS. But, though directing us practically, the way it presents them misleads us systematically about the nature of the individuals with which we have our practical dealings and poses serious questions about the status of the universals we use to describe them. We are all quite aware of the consequences in the practical order of unsettling the question of universals. The notion of capacity can overcome the problems involved.

Hegel and Nietzsche stood opposed to the monastic tradition which they saw as based upon a denial of the intrinsic value of this life. Both sought to install eternity in this life and not seek for it in an afterlife. Central to both, and contrary to common caricatures of Hegel, is the notion of the heart, the aspect of total subjective participation, which is the locus of a fully concrete reason understood in Hegel’s sense. It is also central to Dostoevsky’s (...) Brothers Karamazov where the heart of Fr. Zosima, while yet rooted in the encompassing eternality of God, overcomes the contempt for the earth of Fr. Ferapont and leads Alyosha to embrace his vocation in the world. Hegel developed the fundamental categories that allows us to comprehend the situation. (shrink)